An argument for withdrawal (Part Two)

"He putteth forth his hand upon the rock; he overturneth the mountains by the roots. He cutteth out rivers among the rocks; and his eye seeth every precious thing. He bindeth the floods from overflowing; and the thing that is hid bringeth he forth to light.
But where shall wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding?
Man knoweth not the price thereof; neither is it found in the land of the living."
- Job 28:9-13

Common arguments for perpetuating the war:

“Better the chaos and slaughter over there than here.”

I have yet to see a single credible intelligence or foreign policy analyst suggest that anything remotely like Iraq could happen here in the U.S. whether U.S. forces are still in Iraq or not. Every serious analyst I’ve looked at from DIA to DHS says that it is very likely that one day in the not too distant future terrorists will manage to pull off a devastating attack once more on American soil whether U.S. forces are in Iraq or not. And, by the way, no level of border security or invasive, warrantless surveillance by federal authorities will be able to make us “safe” either. The bottom line is that there is no possible way the chaos of Iraq can reach the U.S.. Why? Because of fundamental differences between the two nations.

The average Iraqi citizen is increasingly hostile to the American “occupation” and loyal to partisan militias, Americans by and large are not especially sympathetic to terrorists who are trying to kill them. Iraq is plagued by centuries of blood feuds between clans, ethnicities, and religions, America has the Red Sox and the Yankees. Iraq is surrounded by states far more likely to fuel the fires of conflict than Mexico or Canada (though one never knows about that Harper fella, he did refuse to meet with Bono at the G8 summit, and if that doesn’t qualify as "Axis of Evil" material, I don’t know what does). And if one takes a look at where the terrorists are from that have actually tried to conduct attacks on American soil, one would see that they are not from Iraq, they are from Great Britain, Canada, and American citizens. This argument is simply a wholehearted embrace of the politics of Fear.

“If we leave, Iraq will descend into chaos, and we can’t let that happen because…”

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Iraq is getting worse and worse and there seems to be nothing we can do about it. As it turns out (as almost every general who was asked predicted) the troop surge is a spectacular failure. Even the overly optimistic generals on the ground have admitted that the army has been able to secure only a third of the Baghdad neighborhoods they hoped to by this point in the surge. They cite Iraqi army incompetence and cowardice as a reason that U.S. troops have not been able to move on from these few Baghdad neighborhoods. Also it is increasingly noted that Iraq’s police force is essentially just a training ground for the thousands of armed partisans that fill the ranks of local militias (and is it any surprise when we consider that those policemen’s families have to live in these neighborhoods administered by armed militias). Ultimately, whether we are there or not, the situation is going to get far worse before it gets better.

As a side note, although absolute chaos in Iraq is a possibility if we leave, I think the chances of that happening are actually quite low. Probably the most significant reason for this is that the regional powers really don’t have a vested interest in a large, completely failed state in their neighborhood.

“If we leave Iraq, that will send a signal to our enemies that we are weak, and it will embolden them.”

I guess I’ll have to break the bad news once more: that horse left the barn a long, long time ago. I figure the “enemies” must be rogue nation states (i.e. Iran, N. Korea, Syria, etc.) and terrorist groups (Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, etc.). I think both groups are quite aware of the situation in Iraq, and I don’t think they could be any more emboldened than they are now.

The whole world knows that we have failed in Iraq: we have lost. Only the Bush PR machine and about 30% of the American population are desperately clinging to this absurd fantasy of the U.S. smoothly sailing on to victory in Iraq, having only to weather an occasional squall. The reality is that the whole world watched the American people punish Bush for the war in the congressional election of 2006. The whole world can see Bush’s job approval rating is worse than Nixon’s in the process of being impeached. The whole world saw an unprecedented number of generals and admirals (both active and retired) and the Army Times editor calling for the resignation of Rumsfeld. The whole world can see that the U.S. forces, despite a valiant effort to hold the country together, are being killed at an alarming rate, are losing more and more ground to partisan forces, and are having little to no success training up an effective Iraqi army and police force. The whole world can see how our military is broke: two year deployments with a one year turn around, the chief of staff saying that 1/3 of the army’s equipment has been consumed in Iraq and Afghanistan, recruiting grandparents (I kid you not, in my old Guard unit a grandmother and her grandson joined at the same time), felons, and those who declare they one day hope to get a GED: recruiters are scraping the bottom of the barrel. The whole world can see that the Interior Minister of Afghanistan just this week declared that coalition forces rule by day, but “the Taliban rules the night” in his country, and we are powerless to stop it because we are so deeply mired in Iraq. The whole world can see that Bush is about as popular home and abroad as the Bubonic Plague.

As for specifically terrorist groups, Osama bin Laden has rallied his troops for decades by saying “Remember Mogadishu! The West will run if we spill enough of their blood.” I hate to be the furtherer bearer of bad news, but that is enough for zealots to be as emboldened as they can be. That was 1993 and it still emboldens the terrorists, of course, they also are regularly emboldened by remembering the Crusdaes, and how the West was ultimately pushed out of the Arab world by enough blood spilled. When I was in Bosnia, I was an analyst specializing in extremist groups and I watched their propaganda and recruitment videos. Let me assure you that our pulling out of Iraq will be one more thing for them to get excited about, but it will have no discernable effect amongst the warped minds of fundamentalist, religious zealots.

I conclude my argument by summarizing that there are no good reasons to stay in Iraq, there are only scores of very good reasons to leave Iraq.

An argument for withdrawal (Part One)

And the victory that day was turned into mourning unto all the people.
- 2 Samuel 19:2

Recently, I was asked for my thoughts on whether we (the American military presence) should pull out of Iraq or not. Naturally, this became the subject for a blog. The argument that constitutes the following entry goes against my soldierly instinct of “no retreat” and so it was not easily that I settled upon this conclusion: we should pull out of Iraq, and we should do it soon.

The foundation of any effective argument is to understand and frame the problem correctly. In terms of understanding the problem, I do my best to stay up on current events through a variety of sources (from the WSJ to the NYT), and I’d like to think that my background as an army intelligence analyst contributes to a more informed position. In terms of framing the question, I think it is important to understand that there have been 3,521 American military members killed in Iraq since the war began (03/19/03); 25,830 American military seriously wounded (that is the official total, though depending ion the definition of “seriously wounded” NGO’s have placed the figure as high as 75,000); 65,000 – 70,000 Iraqi citizens reported killed in military actions since the war began (those numbers are reported deaths by military action, mind you); and a UN estimate of four million displaced Iraqis flooding into neighboring countries that are entirely unprepared to deal with the massive influx of people. With these kinds of numbers, the onus is not on the one wishing to end such actions as lead to these results; rather, it is the unpleasant obligation of those wishing to perpetuate the situation leading to these atrocities that must offer up many exceptionally good reasons to continue this tragically misguided and obviously failing war.

Let us first evaluate what the war effort in Iraq is accomplishing so as to clearly demonstrate my supposition that the effects of the war have been almost entirely disastrous. After this is established, we’ll consider the most common arguments used to argue that continuing the war is a good idea.

I’ve chosen four substantial effects of the war in Iraq with which to build my supposition.

1) The war in Iraq has made Iran more powerful than the Persians have been since the days of Xerxes. We eliminated the only legitimate opposition to Iran’s position as a regional super-power, while making ourselves too weak to check the growing Iranian nuclear threat. The Shiite government has found a ready ally in Iran, though not as strong an alliance as have the Shiite radical imams, death squads, and numerous partisan militias.

2) Al-Qaeda was on life support after September 11^th, but the war in Iraq has flooded their ranks and made them the most powerful terrorist network on the planet. Daniel Byman (Director of the Center for Peace and Security Studies at Georgetown University) reminds us in the most recent issue of Foreign Affairs that there was a time when the whole world (ally or not) was hunting down Al-Qaeda wherever they were to be found. The terrorist network was almost entirely eliminated, but due almost exclusively to the war in Iraq, Al-Qaeda is now larger and more lethal than ever. The network exports increasingly savage tactics, holy warriors, money, and information into Kashmir, Chechnya, Somalia, and ironically back into Afghanistan where Al-Qaeda was formerly centered.

3) The war in Iraq has made Radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr the most powerful man in Iraq. The gangland style execution of former dictator Saddam Hussein with the executioners chanting “Moqtada! Moqtada! Moqtada!” says it all. He commands as many “allies” in the Iraqi parliament as any single party (bringing the government to a standstill last year when he demanded a boycott of the parliament). His armed followers have thoroughly infiltrated all official Iraqi security forces, control the streets of east Baghdad and the Shiite south, and fill the ranks of numerous death squads who assassinate Iraqi politicians with impunity and terrorize the Sunni minority. Moqtada al-Sadr was a junior cleric of no importance that the war in Iraq has made into a (if not the) actual national leader.

4) Prior to Iraq, Arab dictators were under a great deal of pressure to reform, but they now rest easy. I paraphrase from an excellent article by Marina Ottaway (Director of the Middle East program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace): The failure of U.S. policy in Iraq has provided autocratic regimes in the Middle East a reprieve from the pressure to democratize, as long as they position themselves clearly on the side of Washington in its looming confrontation with Iran, Syria, and Shiite Islamists. Saudi Arabia and Egypt have been the biggest beneficiaries of the U.S. loss of interest in draining the swamp of autocracy once it was confronted by large alligators of its own making such as Iran and its allies. Once again, autocracy is thriving – and so are the alligators.

These four effects of the war effort in Iraq are not all one could offer as support of my supposition. One could talk about the dramatically enhanced standing of China on the world stage as U.S. credibility the world over conversely plummets. One could talk about the obvious lack of military threat from the U.S. to check North Korean nuclear ambitions, the genocide in Darfur, or a hypothetical attack on our own homeland. One could talk about the army being stretched to a breaking point on many levels. One could talk about the still ballooning financial cost of the war $440,397,667,000 as of 06/17/07. One could talk about the ever increasing rate of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq as the partisan forces improve their tactics. – But I imagine the four cited effects of the war in Iraq should be enough to establish that the effects of the war are overwhelmingly negative.

[I will conclude this argument by discussing the more common arguments for continuing the war in the next blog entry.]